Venezia!!

Venice was AWESOME! I had lots of fun even though it was extremely crowded. I've never seen so many people on the streets. Friday morning we left early for Venice and got there around 2ish. We got to our hotel, which was much nicer than any of us were expecting. We had about 45 minutes to settle in a bit and then we headed of to Piazza San Marco, which is the main square in Venice. From our hotel it was at least a 25-30 minute walk. I will not complain about having to walk 20 minutes to the IES center again! Once we got to Piazza San Marco, we got to go into the Doge Palace. Since we were sort of left on our own with this, I am not entirely sure what I saw or what the palace exactly is. I think it was the palace that the ruling family lived in. The artwork inside was amazing. All the rooms were beautiful and I noticed that some of the rooms had plain wood ceilings, which I thought was a bit odd. After all, everything else was very detailed and intricate. It reminded me of Buckingham Palace in a way. It was huge and sort of set up the same way. But this palace definitely had more artwork in it (obviously since it's in Italy). Once we were finished at the Doge Palace we had to find our own way back to the hotel. It took us about 2-3 hours to get back since we had no idea where to go. Not to mention our maps weren't that great. I think in total, I walked to and from Piazza San Marco 4 or 5 times. Insanity! I definitely got my walking in.
On Saturday, we had the continental breakfast and then got to go on a walking tour around Venice. We got to see a couple of places, including the Jewish Ghetto. This was our first stop and I found it to be the most interesting. It was the place that all the Jewish people lived in. They couldn't leave the Ghetto and nobody could come in. They weren't allowed to build any churches because the only churches that could be built out of marble and what not had to be Christian churches. So, instead they secretly built synagogues. You can tell where they are because there are 5 tall windows near the top of a building. It looks completely different than the rest of the building, but unless you know that you wouldn't know that there are any synagogues or places of worship in the Ghetto. There's also a memorial wall to remember the holocaust. They have it there because they want to remember what happened so it doesn't ever happen again. They also don't call it the holocaust because that implies that they went willingly to sacrifice. Which obviously didn't happen. I forget the word they use instead... Anyways, we stopped at a couple of churches afterwards that to be honest I didn't really pay attention to or I just don't remember what we learned. After the walking tour, we had a big group lunch. The food was really good and we had an entire meal: first course, second course, and dessert. The first course was pasta with vegetables; the second course was pork and roasted potatoes; and for dessert we had tiramisu. Delicious! After that we had the rest of the day to do whatever we wanted. I went to get my face painted and then just walked around a bit and shopped. I got a couple pairs of earrings that I really like and are Murano glass. In fact, I am wearing one of the pairs of earrings right now.
On Sunday, we had the morning to ourselves again, so we went to see the archeological museum. The first couple of rooms in the museum were pretty blah. We were confused and were thinking of leaving. Then it got better and there was some pretty interesting stuff. At noon there was a ceremony where someone dressed up as a dove went from the top of the bell tower into San Marco. I thought this person was going to go pretty fast into the Piazza since I heard she was going to "zip-line" into the piazza. Instead, she went really slow and it took probably 10-15 minutes for her to get to the ground. But, it was still really cool to be able to see that. After that, we walked back towards our hotel and got some lunch. We had some really good pizza that we are pretty sure was authentic Italian. Yes! We then went back to the hotel to wait to go to the bus. Honestly, I was really glad to be on the bus because it was an exhausting weekend. All I wanted to do was sit down and sleep, which is exactly what I did on the bus. We got back into Siena around 9:30 and I booked it home. It was so nice to be back here since the streets weren't crowded at all and I knew where I was going. It's always nice coming back to a familiar place :)
I'm so glad I was able to go to Venice for Carnevale! Ciao!